


Fighting Ghosts

by tarysande



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-13 12:52:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4522788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarysande/pseuds/tarysande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He looks at her like she’s precious, like she’s a gift, like he loves her.<br/>But he does not make love to her, and she doesn’t know how to ask why not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fighting Ghosts

She hears the story from Varric first, and is glad of it. He does not remark on her reddened cheeks. He brings no attention to her widened eyes. He relates it with none of his usual storytelling flair. Broad brushstrokes. No adjectives. Watching her too closely.

The story Varric tells her is not the truth.

Not even close.

She says, in a voice like pebbles and broken glass, “Must be true, then, if that’s what they’re saying.”

#

She and her Commander have been dancing around each other for weeks, months. She can’t pretend she’s oblivious any more than he can hide the stammer or the faint flush in his cheeks when she catches him off-guard. They kiss on the ramparts. Her fingers sometimes brush his, lingering overlong. More often than not, she lifts her eyes at the war table to find his already fixed on her.

When he asks her to join him on the trip to Ferelden, she is disappointed when the usual entourage accompanies them most of the way, and more disappointed still when separate tents are pitched each night. Sometimes she lies awake, curled on her side, staring in the direction of his tent, wondering if he’s doing the same, wondering why they’re not curled up together, warm and laughing. 

After he presses an old, old coin into her palm and curls her fingers tight around it; after he kisses her on a dock with his hair gone nearly as curly as her own in the mist; after they converse easily on virtually any subject the other happens to bring up, she thinks it will happen. Waits for it. Longs for it. _Imagines_ it. He will slide his fingers through her hair and then down the back of her neck, bringing his hands to rest on her shoulders. He will look her in the eyes with that particular directness he usually saves for the war table. He will say, “Is this what you want?” and she will nod, nervous at first, then not, not nervous at all, and find her voice. She’ll say, “Yes.”

It doesn’t happen. He kisses her more frequently (not frequently enough). If they are alone, he’ll drape an arm over her shoulders or cup her small hand in his palms. They laugh and talk and play chess. 

He looks at her like she’s precious, like she’s a gift, like he loves her.

But he does not make love to her, and she doesn’t know how to ask why not.

#

“Huh,” Varric muses, and she cannot meet his too-perceptive eyes. “So that explains why the servants were grousing about the mess. Figured he lost his temper. Didn’t think he had it in him.”

“No,” she says. “Not temper.”

This, too, is a kind of lie, though she thinks the more accurate word might be _despair._

# 

She interrupts a meeting. Stands against one wall, watching. Smiling. Cullen looks up and sees her. He smiles, too, and loses his train of thought. He sends his officers away.

She is wearing a pale green dress, and has a trio of small roses tucked into the curls behind her ear, red for love, so fragrant she has no need of perfume. The coin he gave her on the dock in Ferelden hangs around her neck. She sees his eyes catch on it and hold; she sees the faint curve of his smile.

She sees how tired he is, and how ragged he’s worn himself. He gives and gives and gives, and still the vultures pick at his bones for more.

She sees the way his hands shake as he presses the door shut.

Her own hands shake as well, but for different reasons altogether. She buries them in her skirts.

His voice breaks when he speaks about the future. Hers sounds certain—so certain (too certain?)—when she replies, “Cullen, do you really need to ask?”

She leans against the desk. She breaks a wine bottle. 

He slides his fingers through her hair and down the back of her neck, and his hands come to rest on her shoulders. But instead of direct, his gaze flickers, drops, and for a moment the only word that comes to mind is _terrified_. She speaks his name softly and kisses him when he looks at her once more.

He kisses like a parched man at an oasis, both delighted and desperate, and she returns his kisses like water enjoying being drunk. When they break from each other moments (minutes, hours) later, they both breathe heavily, and the terror is gone from his eyes. She takes one of his hands in hers, kissing each of his calloused fingertips, pressing her soft cheek against his palm, and then she rests that hand against her breastbone, overtop the coin. The hesitation is almost imperceptible, but she does not miss it, and when her own breath catches in response, he turns away, hand opening and closing into a fist at his side.

She is already at the door before she can think better of it, but the faint plea he calls after her gives her pause. She turns, back pressed against the heavy wood, willing the tears out of her eyes, hands crossed at her breast to keep her heart from beating through her ribs. The hem of her dress is stained red and the room stinks of spilled wine. She says, “I don’t understand.”

His heart breaks. She sees it in the way his brow crumples and his eyes close; in the way he turns his face away as though he cannot bear to look at her. And then, swift as she’s ever seen him strike on the battlefield, he turns and sweeps everything from his desk. Papers flutter. Something heavy shatters. Books land awkwardly, pages bent and spines broken. He grips the edge of his desk and hangs his head and she watches his shoulders shake with the strain.

“I was a templar,” he says, so rough and broken she hardly understands him. His accent is stronger. Even when she does puzzle out his words, they don’t explain his posture, his demeanor, his inability to look her in the eyes.

“I see,” she says, even though she doesn’t.

“No,” he says, calling her bluff. “I do not think you do.”

#

“Hey,” Varric says, taking a step closer. “What’s with the mask?”

She touches her face. Her cheeks are cold.

Varric’s voice drops, tinged with danger. “Did he hurt you?”

She shakes her head, but can’t bring herself to say _no, of course not,_ even though she knows, she knows hurting is the last thing her Commander wishes to do to her _._

_#_

Cold seeps into her blood, cracks her bones, stiffens her spine. She’s never liked cold. She is lightning and fire, sparks and warmth. Her heart stumbles as it fights to pump the slush through her veins. “Then tell me what to think, _Knight-Commander_ ,” she says, twisting a knife she didn’t know she had the capacity to strike with. He flinches. “Tell me how to behave. It’s what you lot do best, isn’t it?”

“You mistake me—”

“Do I?” she snaps, lightning again. Fire again. Not enough. The cold still aches. “You were a templar. I will always be a mage. You might have said something sooner. Any of the times I asked might have worked.” Her hand closes around the necklace at her throat but she cannot bring herself to tear it off. She wants to. And she doesn’t.

“I am _ashamed_ ,” he retorts, turning away from the desk and taking two steps toward her before faltering to a stop. “And I am tormented. This…this second chance does not undo what I experienced. It does not erase who I was before. You would not—could not—have cared for me then. You—”

He brings a hand to his mouth, and even in the candlelight she sees the green tinge of his skin, the frantic working of his throat. The ice refuses to let her move toward him. His breath comes harsh and audible, until finally he regains enough composure to say, “You would have been made Tranquil under Meredith’s regime. You are too bright, too wild, too smart. Too powerful. You make friends too easily. She’d have seen a threat in you, and I’d have stood by as that threat was neutralized. I was a templar. I was a good templar. And that is the power templars have over mages.”

“And yet you kiss me like you mean it.”

“I do,” he breathes, soft as a sigh, pressing the pads of his fingertips against his exhaustion-bruised eyes. “Of course I do. And yet.”

She glances down because she cannot look at him. Her dress is ruined. One of the flowers has fallen from her hair, unwittingly trampled beneath her foot. “Is that it, then? Are we—is this—”

He says, “I know I cannot keep asking for more time. You have already been so patient, more patient than I des—”

“Maker!” she snaps, beating her own closed fist against the door behind her, interrupting him. “If I never hear you use the word _deserve_ again, it will be too soon. I am sick unto death of _deserve_ , Cullen Rutherford.”

Hers is the temper, the summer storm, the wildfire. She does not wait for a response. The door slams behind her. He does not follow.

#

“You want me to shut down the rumor mill?” Varric asks, too gently. She’ll weep if he’s too gentle. The knot of tears gathers in the back of her throat, like a fist choking her.

“You and I both know fighting rumors is like fighting ghosts. Punching at empty air. Ultimately useless.”

Varric snorts. “I don’t know about that. Seems we’ve taken on more than our fair share of spirits. And I can tell a better story. Desks are all well and good, but just a little cliche.”

Smiling slightly, she shakes her head. “It’s something I have to handle, I think.” She pauses. “Thank you, though. For telling me.”

“Figured no one else would. Didn’t want you to get blindsided.” Varric sighs. “Kirkwall’s my home and I love it. I do. But it wasn’t kind to him. And I don’t think Ferelden was easier. If I kept Bianca wound that tight, she’d fall to splinters in my hands.”

“I don’t know what to do,” she says, with a kind of naked honesty she wishes she could take back as soon as the words leave her lips.

Varric doesn’t joke, doesn’t smile, doesn’t brush these words off, doesn’t utter platitudes. He says, “Stories get to be neat and tidy. Life doesn’t. Don’t let one confuse the other. Sometimes fighting ghosts is all you have.”

It is, she thinks, a truth very hard won.

# 

He’s not in his office, not in his loft, not in the practice yard, not in the war room. She doesn’t want to ask anyone. She throws a wave Josephine’s way, and knows how far the rumors have already spread by the kind of smile her ambassador smiles, though of course Josie is too circumspect to mention anything.

Finally, she climbs the steps to her lonely rooms, and finds him perched on the edge of the chaise, the wine-hemmed dress she’d thrown aside clutched in his hands. The stain looks like blood. He raises his eyes. His heart is still broken.

“Forgive the intrusion,” he says. “I wanted to…I thought we should speak. I couldn’t find you.”

“I couldn’t find you, either,” she replies, and sits on the edge of her bed, facing him.

He sets her discarded dress down. His hands are on his knees. Turning them, he fixes his gaze on his palms and says, “It’s not that I don’t…it’s not that I don’t _want_ you.”

She says nothing, because it is clear he is not finished, and she has no weapons to help him win this war.

It is strange, she realizes, to see him sitting, stationary. He does not sit when he can stand, does not stand when he can pace. In the practice yard he moves constantly, always watching, checking, correcting poor grips and bad stances. Preparing. Protecting. Quiet suits him, but stillness does not. He says, “I have little experience. Little genuine experience. With intimacy. All these broken bits, things that felt real but weren’t. Over and over and over.” He pushes both hands into his hair, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. “You know so little about who I was, about what formed me. When I say I don’t deserve you, I mean you deserve so much better than what I have to give. Now. Perhaps always.”

She slips off the bed, kneeling beside him, and touches his wrist gently. He does not flinch or pull away. “I want you too,” she says. “In any way you’ll have me. I want no one else. But I do not want more than you can give. Comfortably. And I’m…I’m so sorry if I made it seem otherwise.” Her fingers trace the furrows creasing his brow, smooth out his eyebrow, rest at his temple. “I want to be your solace, Cullen, and I want to be your home. I do not want to be another battle you must fight. Sex is sex. Nice, but not necessary. Love is something altogether different. And I do love you. You know that, right?”

“I love you, too,” he breathes against her lips, soft as a new beginning. 

They do not make love, not then, but they do sleep curled up together, warm and laughing.

#

“You’re right,” she tells Varric the next morning over breakfast.

“Usually,” he agrees, “but about what in particular?”

“Some ghosts are worth fighting.”

“Ahh,” he says, and smiles.

 

 


End file.
